It may not have been perfect, but Serena Williams had little trouble in her 2012 opener Monday in Brisbane. The former No. 1 easily dismantled Chanelle Scheepers 6-2, 6-3.

“I was a little rusty, not playing since the US Open, but I think I did well,” said Williams. “I played a really good player today. It wasn’t an easy first round at all. She’s had some great wins and I can definitely see why. I’ve taken some of the rust off – I definitely have tons of room for improvement though.”

After taking the fall post-US Open season off, Serena was playing her first “WTA” event since August.

“I think for me it’s all about motivation as opposed to my skill or anything else,” Serena added.

“As long as the motivation’s there it’s definitely going to be cool.

“I’m not playing a full schedule this year. I just want to be able to do other things that I’m doing and I think that will help keep my motivation up.

“I’m always preparing myself for life after tennis.”

Next up for Serbian 20-year-old Bojana Jovanovski.

Other winners were top seed Sam Stosur and No. 2 Andrea Petkovic.

For the men Gilles Simon, Bernard Tomic and Marcos Baghdatis, who beat Ryan Harrison, were also winners.

Today’s highlights include Andy Murray 2012 debut and in a meeting of former No. 1s, Kim Clijsters’ meets Ana Ivanovic.

happy new year to everyone. Looking forward to great tennis in 2012.
dari – I am worried about roger too. tomorrow he opens up with davydenko. I know davy hasn’t been great last year but he is always a dangerous opponent. he needs a good tournament in Doha to build his confidence.
Go get them rog.

Want to know what irritates me? You don’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. It’s people who add that pathetic “just saying” to a post. It sounds like an apology for a post the poster himself knows is useless. Have the courage of your convictions, or keep quiet!

Who cares if Fed wins against Davydnko or not, he needs to win against his main rival Rafa. I for one would sure like to hate the idea of another Abu-Dhabi like spanking at Rafa’s hands of Roger. And to see where Roger’s game really is, I badly want a Rafa-Roger meeting in the Doha final. Nothing less would suffice. And looking at the trend of Roger-Rafa match on hardcourts since 2008, I wouldn’t bet on Rafa losing! Rafa surprisingly used to beat Federer even on all types of fast outdoor HCs like Miami and Dubai, even prior to 2008, never mind 2012!

Baily: Dubai is certainly one of the fast surfaces in recent times.Everybody knows it. Nadal once called Shanghai(when year end finals were being played there) ‘ULTRA FAST’, now I dunno about its status. Last year Federer called Paris as ‘blazing fast’ due to some ajustments, thouhg this year it was playing slower again(as it is known in general for years). So there are very few fast surfaces left now, and I know with conviction that USO & Dubai are among them! Miami may be slowing these days, but I have known people talking about it being faster than IW or Montreal 2-3 years back, thats why I guessed it was still fast.

your right about dubai being fast I mistook it for an other court, but miami along with indian wells is one of if not the slowest hardcourts out. There are barely any fast courts now, according to the ITF court pace ratings the only ‘real’ fast hardcourt is paris. I personally like cincinnati the most in terms of speed and bounce.

Yup, agree with you that courts have been drastically slowed down over the years, attempt is endlessly ongoing to bring uniformity in courts, which is rather unfortunate considering that legendary champions liek Borg had to made unbeievable adjustments from roland garros to wimbledon for the sake of wins in these tournaments(difference in speed between these two courts was so massive with the then WIMBledon courts being THE FASTEST EVER IN TENNIS HISTORY, and in this regard just diametrically opposite in nature to RG; now a days even the USO, Dubai and Paris courts are much faster thsn WIMBLEDON; not to mention these fast courts of today won’t hold a cndle to the pre-2001 courts in speed). But now a days almost everybody looks lik an all-court player considering that the diffeence in speed has been cut down hugely between various courts.

completly agree. It’s very unfortunate that all the courts have become so homogene. to make matters worse the bounce of many courts has changed as well, wimbledon for example has now a higher bounce. The balls used by some tournaments are also slightly different, which helps slowing the game down.